Ginsters wars at Harthill
Posted by The Leither in March's Magazine
Let the train take the strain’ it said on some advert or other, possibly for a rail company. I refused. I didn’t like the cut of the train’s jib. I let the bus take the fuss. Better jib. Good jib. The right kind of jib. Jib so good it almost stopped sounding like an odd word the more times you said it. Jib jib jib. Jib. Jib. Jib jib.
I was travelling to Glasgow, the pearl of Strathclyde. I like Glasgow a lot. I like the awesome, ambitious scale of George Square and the fact that the taxis are cheaper. I like it that after 100 or more visits I still can’t quite find my way around. The centre is supposed to work on some kind of grid system, like New York. In fact, the grid was plotted on the back of a Belgian waffle by a visually impaired raindrop.
Like repeated sex with an imaginary friend, the Citylink bus to Glasgow can be a lonely affair. This is especially true if you travel in the middle of the day, as I did, when none of your fellow passengers really has a purpose or they wouldn’t be travelling to Glasgow on a bus on a Tuesday afternoon.
The mid-afternoon coach is bound only by mutually-shared pet hates. Should any passenger recline their seat, use the over-flowing portaloo or eat anything hot and ethnic it can, to quoth comedy’s Danny Dyer, get pwoper naahsty. It’s a tightrope, a maelstrom of simmering bad habits. One false move on an unopened Ginsters can so easily spill over into unspeakable violence on the Harthill tarmac.
M & S Percy Pigs (note product placement)
That night, I was put-up in a ridiculously swanky hotel where even the bedbugs had room service. Within a minute of my entrance earlier in the afternoon, three people had called me ‘Sir’, which I took to be sarcastic.
One of the name-callers then picked up my bags (admittedly, ‘bags’ is a bit strong: one consisted of an M&S carrier containing some opened Percy Pigs), while another showed me to my room. It was suitably ridiculous. Across wall after wall switches, ports and possibly portals stared back at me. Cushions were everywhere. Cushions on the chaises-longue and the bed. Cushions on the sofa. Cushions on cushions. Cushions on cushions on cushions.
I pointed the remote control around the room and something which I took to be a window sprung into life. Next came the sound, gushing from speakers in the ceiling. Doctors blared out from four corners and I collapsed, frightened. Thankfully, a cushion broke my fall. As the programme’s plot ebbed and did its best to flow, I began to believe I was part of some twisted torture routine. Make any man that comfortable, and you can break him.
I crawled to the minibar and ran my fingers down the price list in search of the word ‘complimentary’. Bottled water fitted the gratis bill. Phew. Plunging my hand through things that cost money I reached for its glassy sheath and pulled it free. Fumbling it open I leaned against the wall and splashed springwater over my face. Everything was going to be fine.
“You alright Sir?” Said the porter, still awaiting his tip.
Oh come on. Come on. Is this thing on?
Sleeping at the GFT
After Mrs Portraits had arrived, we laughed at how she’d never seen me cowering and sobbing underneath a mountain of cushions quite that high before, and proceeded to amble along the fine streets of No Mean City.
Turning the stereotype register up to 11, the rain fell in table legs and a drunken man of 80 or so offered me a fight. We ran for the Glasgow Film Theatre. What a place. Wooden panels coughing heavily and oh so glad of the smoking ban. Signs in typefaces that demand respect.
In the auditorium, some audience members had taken our chosen film’s title, The Big Sleep, a little too literally and snoozed deeply.
The film crackled into life. Humphrey Bogart’s trousers were up to his nipples and his one-liners stupendous. Staring far too intently at Lauren Bacall I experienced a weird sense of comfort that my Granddads had probably done the same when they arrived back from the war.
Mind, at least their combat was over by then: I’d still to get the bus back. ν
Info: Daniel Gray’s Stramash: Tackling Scotland’s Towns and Teams (‘a brilliant way to rediscover Scotland’ – The Herald) is still on sale. See: stramashthebook.com